


deadlock

by virginianwolfsnake



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: F/F, Gen, these two should not be in a car
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28538481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virginianwolfsnake/pseuds/virginianwolfsnake
Summary: a vastly frustrating detour with a highly irritating passenger.
Relationships: Kit Snicket/Esmé Squalor, but it’s safe to say it’s complicated
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9





	deadlock

“This is unbelievable.”

The leather bench seats in a car of this age do not recline, which Esmé has already griped about, so she has folded herself into a strange position and covered herself over with her own mink. Kit had hoped she would fall asleep after that, but instead all she has done since is complain; about everything from the sunlight being too bright, the noise the taxi makes when it reaches high speeds, the fact that Kit’s arm comes too close to her when she has to change gear, the very brief snippet of Kit’s favourite cassette that she had ironically only attempted to play to drown out the complaints, and now, finally, the traffic. 

_How have you ever put up with this woman long enough to —_ Kit begins to ask herself, and then, with a pang of guilt; _don’t think about that now._

“Will you stop?” Kit hisses. “What am I supposed to do, part the traffic? I don’t have telekinetic powers.”

“Well, reading their minds would hardly help anyway, would it?” The actress (if one were feeling charitable enough to call her that) scoffs. “I imagine they are all thinking the same thing: will we _actually die here_ , in this endless traffic jam?”

That reminds her of Olaf so much she wants to scream, even more than she has wanted to all morning. On top of it all, Kit is also just as irritated by the traffic as her passenger. She isn’t the kind of person who stays still, and she doesn’t share her brother’s obsession with obeying traffic laws, either, so it’s rather rare that she will find herself in this kind of gridlock. But they are trapped in the early-morning commuter rush over the bridge, and short of abandoning the taxi altogether or endangering pedestrians on their way into their offices, she is left with little option. Finally getting Esmé out of the car, and then reporting back to headquarters that she has spectacularly failed to foil the plot they had suspected would be unfolding in the City today, are not good enough reasons to do anything _too_ dangerous. Though the longer they bicker, the closer she comes to reconsidering.

“I’ll have you know,” Kit says crisply. “That the only reason we are stuck here is because I very kindly agreed to drive you home. A little gratitude wouldn’t go amiss.”

Esmé has never thanked anyone for anything within earshot of Kit, and so it’s no surprise that she doesn’t start now. “I offered to drive.”

“It’s my car!”

“And you are very, very poor at handling it. Actually!” Here she interrupts herself, as she often does, jack-knifing their conversation back a step. “Have you forgotten that you drive a _taxi?_ A vehicle which generally drives people to places they want to go? It’s a bit rich to present taking a passenger as a good deed.” 

This taxi rarely drives anyone where they actually want to go. Most commonly, it drives them to the places that they need to be, whether they like it or not. Kit decides not to mention that. “Do I suppose you’ll pay me for the journey, then?”

“No,” Esmé cries, clearly affronted. “The service has been horrendous. And I’m late.”

“The fact remains,” Kit persists. “That I took the time out of _my_ busy schedule to drive _you_ home, thirty minutes out of my way, rather than leave you in that motel. Which, in hindsight, would have been immeasurably easier and immeasurably more pleasant for me.”

“Your busy schedule?” Her passenger chortles. “ _Right_. I suppose someone will have to cover for you today at that library nobody ever goes to. How tragic. Will they cope, do you think?”

That isn’t what she does for a living, and what she does for a living is not on her list of tasks for today either, but it’s probably for the best if Esmé believes that to be true.

“Still,” Kit continues, once she can trust herself to hold her tongue. “Do they not say thank you over this end of town?”

“Snicket, I have someone to meet in the Banking District in half an hour. If I make it, I might mail you my thanks later.”

“Half an hour?” Kit cannot help but laugh. Esmé lives very close by, but even that close proximity won’t help her literally go back in time, which is the only way Kit can imagine this happening. “You were never going to make it, even on a clear road.”

“We might have, if you’d let _me_ drive.”

“Not unless you happened to know the location of a teleporter.”

Esmé groans as if, in her twisted imagination, Kit is the one who has been utterly unbearable for the last two hours. “Will you just be quiet? And turn off?”

“What, into the river?” Kit snaps, waving her arm to indicate that, in case the other woman had not yet noticed, they are in the middle of a bridge. “Fantastic idea.”

“At the _end_ of the bridge, Snicket. You are incorrigible.”

“Whatever direction I turn in — which I will choose, in my own car, thank you — you’re never going to make your meeting. Even if you were planning to attend looking like _that,_ which I would advise against.”

Esmé takes such misplaced pride in looking perfect, as if that’s such an achievement, that there is a sense of satisfaction in finally seeing her dishevelled. The trickle of water from the motel shower, and the half-hearted attempt to dry her hair afterward with a semi-functional hairdryer, has left her with a fuzzy black cloud of kinks and knots where her normally sleek, glossy curls would be. The lipstick she had worn the night before, a rich burgundy, has had the unfortunate side effect of staining her skin overnight in a way that will need to be tackled with something more heavy-duty than soap and water, and currently leaves a strange reddish pattern around her bottom lip and cheek like a rash.

Kit, somehow, has escaped the same issue. She can only assume when she wiped at her lips guiltily in the dark, with her opposing number already asleep beside her, she must have got it out before it truly stained. 

_Now is not the time to start thinking about that._

Esmé is sneering at her, though the effect is rather dampened by the comical, slightly clownish effect of her stained-on lips and her messy halo of hair. “Better like this than in that _hideous_ flannel shirt. Lumberjack-chic has been out practically since time began.”

Kit’s fingers drum against the steering wheel impatiently. They are crawling forward in a most irritating way, and the conversation isn’t helping. “I am not arguing with you about fashion again. It’s inane.”

A brief pause. “Your brother’s writing is inane as well, then.”

“Fine.” Kit concedes, for a temporarily easier life, and doesn’t continue. 

The silence is more uneasy than the bickering, and it will not last. Kit lets it drag out, waits and waits, knowing how much Esmé despises it (even more than she does) and then, when she hears her draw breath to break it, interrupts before she can.

“What were you really doing in Ophelia last night?”

It is probably pointless to ask. Esmé may not possess a complete childhood of their training, but she is hardly dim enough to say anything useful when asked directly. Kit’s subtler techniques yielded nothing last night, even when she was rather distracted ( _stop thinking about it_ ), so this approach is going to be useless. But nobody could ever accuse Kit Snicket of giving up easily. 

“None of your business.” Esmé replies lightly. 

“You know,” Kit muses, calculatingly. “I know my brother says you’re a fool, but I have never agreed. I really thought you would come up with something cleverer than that.”

Esmé takes a couple of seconds to think about that. Kit is expecting either something rather impressive, or a misstep so grave it gives her a genuine clue, but in the end she just leans closer across the seat and says, quite confidently: “Train-spotting.” 

Kit snorts in spite of herself. “ _That_ is hopeless. In the dark? Nowhere near a train station?”

“Go on then, Virginia Hall,” Esmé challenges. “What were _you_ doing in Ophelia last night?”

“My brother has asked me to write a travel column for the newspaper,” Kit finds herself smiling as she makes up this little tale. It is ridiculous and it is a very welcome break. “It is only a draft piece, so that he can show it to his editor. I have never been to Ophelia, so I thought I’d —”

“That is _far_ too long,” her companion laughs. “Unless the strategy is to bore your mark until they stop listening?”

“Shut up,” Kit chuckles, and then remembers who she is with and what she is supposed to be doing. She clears her throat and reminds herself to get back to business.

 _Could’ve done with that attitude last night,_ an accusatory little voice inside her somewhere says, and she makes a point to ignore it. There is no point worrying until there is something to worry about.

“I have to assume you don’t spend your Tuesday nights in gritty roadside motels for no good reason,” she says, in a much more serious tone this time. This is not the time to joke around, and this woman is not the person to do it with. “It hardly seems your style.”

“I assume the same would be true of you,” Esmé replies, from beneath the mink which she has now pulled up so far that it covers her stained mouth. “Though, to be fair, I never have understood what it is you volunteers actually do for fun.”

“Perhaps I was intercepting my target,” Kit says slowly, coyly, and turns her head to watch for whatever reaction she might get from that. With only her passenger’s eyes currently uncovered, and with those pointedly closed, she learns nothing.

“Perhaps,” Esmé says warily. “Or perhaps I was intercepting mine.”

It appears neither of them is entirely sure which has hampered the efforts of the other, either the most, or at all. This deadlock could be resolved if they could tell each other their motives and their rationale, but that is out of the question.

The traffic has started to move, much to Kit’s relief, and this gives her a moment to start thinking about constructing a narrative to explain the events of her rather eventful Tuesday night. She didn’t miss _too_ much. She had trawled every inch of that motel and kept watch on every entrance for the entire night, with the exception of a mere few hours, and that can’t have made any difference, because Esmé _certainly_ didn’t alert anyone that she was distracted during that time, not least because she was at firstoccupied ( _stop_ ) and later, asleep. If the targets _were_ there...well, they simply weren’t. That’s what she’ll say, and that’s the truth.

Besides, their information may have been inaccurate. There is simply no point worrying until there is something to worry about. 

“This isn’t productive,” Esmé decides, and Kit has to resist the urge to tell her that she is stating the bloody obvious. “On whose orders were you there?”

“Ah, you see,” Kit begins, very seriously. “There is this baker over on Chapel Street, and he communicates with us all through his famous cheese scones, and —”

“No more games, Snicket,” Esmé demands, apparently having also decided to get back to business. “Whose orders?”

“In what world would I tell you?”

This is followed by a nasty chuckle. “Is this your way of saying that’s none of my business? Kit,” she says, saccharine-toned in her little victory, and the unusual use of her name conjures a recollection of it said, in a rather different way, under the weak, flickering overhead light in the motel room they shared. _Stop_. “I really thought you’d come up with something cleverer than that.” 

“What’s the point?” Kit scoffs, and shakes her head. “If you’re going to ask stupid questions, I’m going to give you stupid answers. The only _orders_ I followed were my own.”

Kit is better equipped to play this card than some of her peers, because it is well known to everyone who is even remotely linked to their organisation that she has acted on her own initiative more than once. It might not be true this time, but Esmé will have no way of knowing. And if she does, admitting as much will confirm that there _was_ something to see in Ophelia last night after all. Kit hopes this might trick her. Though she draws breath, in the end, her travel companion seems to decide against it, and keeps her mouth shut. 

Kit uses this intermission to delve, just briefly, into the worst-case scenario. She hopes, she really does, that Esmé’s mission in Ophelia wasn’t simply to distract her from being successful at hers because, if it _was_ , she has absolutely achieved her objectives. And there is nothing Kit likes less than having her... occasional lapses in judgement come back to haunt her. 

This is a little different, to be fair. There was a girl in another town, and a boy who grew into a very troubling man in the city, and, yes, she can admit it now, she _wanted_ to see, or to find, the best in them despite their flaws. Their intensity, the strength of their feeling, seemed to suggest there was something there worth searching for. 

But Esmé has no _best._ Even though it is a terrible trait, Kit might be willing to admit that she has occasionally tried too hard to repair the cracks, the wounds, that caused the others to behave the way they did, but Esmé is unscarred, and in no need of repair. 

None of that explains this latest lapse. But it does make her think about this strange woman, who has rather forcibly inserted herself into her taxi and demanded to be driven around, after quite probably working against her — for a set of people who only seem to care for anarchy and annihilation — the night before. And yet there seems to be no legitimate reason behind it.

“I have a genuine question this time,” Kit says eventually, as the traffic continues to ease and they reach the end of the bridge at last. “This is one I actually think you could answer honestly, if you cared to.”

“We’ll see,” Esmé chuckles.

It’s easier to ask this now that they are moving and there is some impetus to keep her eyes firmly on the road. It means she won’t have to watch the mocking expression she is likely to receive in return.

“Why are you even involved in this?” she asks. “What’s your stake in this at all?”

There is none of the mocking laughter she had expected. There is a moment of silence, and then a surprisingly concise clarifying question. “Stake?”

Kit frowns. “You aren’t as trapped as the rest of us.” she says, without trying to dress it up as much as she usually might. “You could still get out.” 

The anticipated laughter comes in the end after all. “ _Trapped?_ Is that in the recruitment brochure?”

Kit ignores the defensive humour. As lowly as she might think of Esmé, she doesn’t doubt that the world would open wide for her. A lack of morals never seems to stand in the way of a successful and profitable life. As unhelpful as it is, the speed at which she managed to infiltrate, very briefly become indispensable to, and then begin assisting in the dismantling of an organisation she should never have known existed is testament to that, if she only would invest the same effort into something else. “You could do something else. Anything else, probably. Why are you here?”

“Wait!” Esmé is still laughing. “Am I, at this moment, witnessing the once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon of _Kit Snicket_ expressing dissatisfaction with the volunteer lifestyle? Should I be recording? Is this little crisis all because we couldn’t get you a coffee before we left?”

“That was a lot of questions.” Kit says coolly. “That is what people do sometimes to avoid answering a simple question themselves.”

Satisfyingly, that briefly wrongfoots her, at least long enough for Kit to continue. “I’m being serious with you. Why do any of this, of all the things in the world?”

Esmé gives a little scoff, and Kit sees her wave her hand dismissively in her peripheral vision. “If you ask stupid questions —”

“ _Don’t_.”

“Well, you already know the answer, don’t you! I’m still owed that sugar bowl.”

“Oh, come on,” Kit groans, exasperated, and takes their stop at the traffic lights as an opportunity to look at her, if only briefly. She looks spectacularly unperturbed, but much less amused than before. “That would be meaningless if you just _left_. Besides, it was three years ago, and you’re never going to get it back, so —”

“I wouldn’t suggest involving yourself in this conversation, Snicket.” Her tone has changed now; darker, more measured, and if Kit had ever in her life been the type to back off or back down, she might have chosen to do it now. “Why don’t _you_ leave, then? Find yourself a library in another remote part of the world and sit there for the rest of your life with your books instead of doing whatever it is you currently do.”

Kit rolls her eyes. It is her own fault that she had dared to expect something more intellectual than a weak deflection. “That’s not the same thing.”

“Ah, yes, because you’re going to save the world, whereas your dissatisfied former colleagues are trying to tear it down. Isn’t that it?”

Kit isn’t going to fall into that trap. All that awaits her there is a character assassination, a dredging up of half-truth and half-rumour about everyone she holds dear, which is all Esmé has ever really known about any of it. Kit knows everything they have done, and everything she has. While she can make her peace with it, she isn’t going to be goaded into rehashing it for a critical audience. 

“Revenge is rarely the only thing a person wants. And even if it _is_ ,” she pauses, with the memory of the prison cell and the lost girl inside it weighing heavily on her mind. “It wouldn’t be worth it, for just that.”

“You know just as well how easily things can be _worth it._ You’ve got three guns in the glove compartment, Snicket. Is that in line with general expectations for a humanitarian?”

“It’s just interesting,” Kit says, trying to control the pitch of her voice, trying to keep her anger from boiling over. “That even the most observant person can _choose_ not to see inconvenient truths. Don’t you think?”

“Snicket.” That she says this in such a long-suffering tone of voice, that she should have the nerve to be the one who is tired of this conversation, is truly beyond comprehension. “For once, I couldn’t agree more. But I think we have different people in mind.”

After a long silence — almost unbearably long for Kit, so she can only imagine it has been painful for Esmé — they finally pull over at their destination. Esmé wastes no time in gathering her mink coat and her bag and reaching for the handle of the door. “Goodbye, Snicket. I do hope the library hasn’t collapsed without you by the time you arrive.” With a sly smile exaggerated by the stray smudges of leftover lipstick, she leans close for dramatic effect. “Or, even better, burned?”

Kit is about to tell her to get out of the car before she makes her regret ever waking up this morning. But before she can, a terrified looking member of the public wrenches open the back seat door and clambers into the taxi inelegantly. 

“You have to help me!” she cries, and Kit’s eyes take her in analytically. She is perhaps fifteen, and she is panicked. “I know this is going to sound far-fetched to you, but there’s a fire in the Banking District, and there’s a _pattern_ to it, I’ve figured it out, and I have to get to the Arts District, _right away_.”

Kit knows before the girl in the backseat has even finished the second syllable of “far-fetched” that she has failed to prevent the chain of events that have already started in the City today, and began in Ophelia last night. However much she suspected it before, it is never nice to have your own failures confirmed and officially rubber-stamped. 

The only real surprise comes in the form of a very unrehearsed, sudden exhale from the passenger seat. She turns her head just in time to catch the expression on Esmé’s face before it disappears — _relief_ — and to realise that she has not been the only one worrying that a brief distraction might have interfered with a larger plan. Unfortunately, this time, the outcome has not fallen in Kit’s favour.

The frightened girl in the backseat is still talking, but Esmé has started to smirk. “There we go, then,” she says, clapping her hands together. “All’s well that ends well, I suppose.”

“Get out,” Kit instructs, feeling sick. “I have work to do.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so.” Esmé looks remarkably more cheerful now, sitting up straight as if suddenly reinvigorated. “Come on, Kit, hurry it up, you’ve got a _world_ to save! Chop chop!”

“You’re ten minutes late for your meeting,” Kit points out, in barely more than a growl, and then she realises. 

_The Banking District._

“Darling,” Esmé says, in a surprisingly gentle tone. “I think it’s safe to assume I’ve missed that one, don’t you?”

Just as she considers bodily removing Esmé from her car, the young woman in the backseat slams her hand on the back of the leather to draw some attention to herself.

“ _Please_ drive,” she begs, in the tone of someone who is rather used to dealing with adults who do not listen. “I don’t have long! I need to go to the —”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Esmé interrupts, with a delighted little laugh. “We heard. We know the way.” 

Driving a dangerous individual — an accomplice! — to the epicentre of an unfolding disaster would _not_ have been advised in her training. Especially when this accomplice is in the process of cheerfully withdrawing an elegant little pistol from her glovebox.

“No, no, _no,_ give me that,” Kit demands, grasping for it and slamming the glove compartment closed before she can turn the safety off or withdraw another.

“Oh, alright.” Her unwelcome partner relents, before withdrawing her own pistol from the ostentatiously patterned purse she has had strewn across her lap for their entire drive with a broad grin. “Now, step on it, Saint Snicket! Unless you’re finally in the mood to let me drive?” Her eyes glimmer with something approaching triumph. “We’re both going to the same place, you know!”

Kit sighs. The girl in the backseat is shifting about impatiently, as if she is so anxious she is about to jump right out of her skin, and looking concernedly between the two occupants in front. If she is going to be a volunteer, she will have to work on her instincts. It should be a sign to open the door and _run_ when two bickering occupants of a taxi withdraw weapons they should not have in the first place. 

“You know what?” Kit decides, levelling the excited villain with a glare and raising her hands off the steering wheel in apparent surrender. “Go ahead. That means I can talk to our passenger.” 

Esmé rolls her eyes. “I can do both. You could too, if you could multitask.”

“Esmé.” Kit so rarely addresses her by name, and even _more_ rarely in such a low, velvet tone, that this seems to capture her attention. Kit sees that she finds this unexpected especially after their disastrous journey, but her sheer ego — and, just perhaps, the fact that such arguments have never stopped them before ( _not now_ ) — seems to render it believable to her. “You _well_ _know_ I can multitask.”

Esmé seems shocked by this unexpectedly lascivious comment from her usually formal sparring partner, so much so that she is rendered speechless, and simply pulls a face in lieu of a reply. Such is her confusion that there is no further discussion of the approach to their change of seats; Esmé simply opens the passenger side door and steps out onto the street outside her apartment block. And in her minuscule moment of distraction, Kit reaches over to slam shut the door. 

There is an outraged yelp, and her hand grasps for the door handle, but it’s too late. With all the speed of an experienced getaway driver, Kit presses the accelerator and wrenches away from the curb with such force that her new passenger is thrown almost entirely onto her side. 

“Sorry,” she remembers to add, once they have pulled away. “I’m afraid that’s an occupational hazard.” 

“I’m a student,” the girl says, confused. 

“No,” Kit replies. “You’re more than that. You’ve just volunteered. Don’t worry; I’ll explain on the way.”

The girl is talking again, but Kit isn’t listening as much as she should be. She is more interested in watching the ever-shrinking figure in the rear view mirror as she runs, full-pelt into the apartment building, probably to phone for another cab. With any luck, the traffic will prevent one from reaching her. 

_That’s the last time,_ she vows. And now, she needs to fix what her lapse in judgement has broken in the first place. 


End file.
